#gotta be confusing trying to figure out how your small son intimidated a dragon into following him

[westwindy1]

People talk a lot about how Valka being kidnapped by dragons must have made Stoick hate them more and how seeing Hiccup defend Toothless must have reminded him deeply of her, and to an extent, if we are going to apply the context of the second movie to the first, it must be true.

However, also imagine that you've got this large web of connections, you've grown up hearing of all these people who live in surrounding islands and you respect them to an incredible degree.

You are strong and everything that has ever happened in your life has only done its work to back that. You're on top of the world, and those people you know? They are too.

You've all gathered for a meeting, and this man comes in, looking odd, with a strange manner, weak in mind, speaking of how he's got the capability to change the world as you know it. He bades that you bow to him, that you surrender yourselves and your ways of life. He claims he has become allies with your worst enemies, the things that have ravaged your people just as you've ravaged them in turn for centuries. He's got no grip on the kind of life you've lived. What he's suggesting is a ridiculous, silly nightmare. You think he's mad.

You sit on your throne and you laugh and the voices of every other Chief in the archipelago are laughing with you.

Then, suddenly, the strange man sets fire to your meeting place, and it seems almost like a nightmare- all at once you lose all of these people who you've looked up to and grown up with distantly as one guy comes in one day and kills them all and you can't do anything.

Then it's up to you to scrape up what's left of their remains and help put them to rest. It's your job to help fill the spots that they left behind, the ground changed completely beneath your feet.

You've been intimidated to the point of terror. You're convinced he's a madman out to get you all. You've seen the real world and your fall has been such that you're convinced that no one can stop him.

You don't know much at all about this strange man who has completely demolished the foundations of your strong society with one fell swoop, who has sentenced so many tribes to years of weakness and vulnerability as they try and get used to their new leaders- this strange man who has exposed your own tribe to the elements as you travel from place to place trying to fortify everything that has been left to ruin.

And then time passes, and you're chugging along with your tribe, and you have a son. He is odd and he seems to have no grip on anything- he doesn't seem capable of understanding the way your home works in all the ways he must. He is odd, weak, of a strange manner and then one day he is not.

One day, you come home and he seems so different- people clamor around him.

He's somehow figured out how to bring a dragon under his control- the most fearsome you've ever known. Unintentionally, he threatens to dismantle the world as you know it. At first, you find yourself reminded of your wife- your son pleads for sympathy, but unlike your wife, your son has succeeded.

You only know of one man who has ever done that, and you've only known of one other that you've found so odd in such an off-putting way.

You find yourself reminded of a madman you'd known very briefly, once upon a time- and you're scared... and mad.